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Weber interview

"Hell's Gate" and "Hell Hath No Fury", by David, Linda Evans, and Joelle Presby, take the clash of science and magic to a whole new dimension...join us in a friendly discussion of this engrossing series!

Speed of light c = infinity appears to mean no electromagnetic radiation, and really appears to mean that you cannot build electrical generators, because E and B are decoupled. Also spin-orbit coupling and hence spectra change. As an amusing consequence, where the calculation has been done as an amusing quantum mechanical calculation, if c becomes really large gold becomes a white metallic liquid very much like mercury. Newtonian mechanics and :light is an ether wave in a medium with mechanical properties, such as a local velocity for c with respect to the frame fixed on the ether", is much simpler in terms of consequences.

You all realize that diamonds only look the way they do because they slow down light while refracting it.

An infinite speed of light means diamonds and other materials like water really look different.

If the speed of light was really infinite, would we be able to see?

Don

Everybody is forgetting about e=mc^2 (where c is the speed of light). That equation came out of relativity combined with the mass-energy equivalence. No mass conversion to energy, no energy souce for the stars. David Weber should think of a "beter idea"

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Everybody is forgetting about e=mc^2 (where c is the speed of light). That equation came out of relativity combined with the mass-energy equivalence. No mass conversion to energy, no energy souce for the stars. David Weber should think of a "better idea"

If c is infinite, stars can keep burning forever, because they consume no mass in doing whatever they are doing.

I believe that you might be overthinking this. If speed of light in a vacuum was infinite, but the same as on earth in all other mediums, then things wouldn't look any different. The stars would be in different positions though.

Also principles of magnetism work on Sharona (the survey team had a compass), regardless of how it might work if light speed was infinite. (Maybe it wouldn't work in a vacuum?)

I am even less convinced that a change in the speed of light would change the fusion process of a star. The equation would need to be changed (not based on the speed of light), but you have to put in the appropriate numbers if you actually want to calculate anything.

He did. His "better idea" for this series is "Magic." For "Magic" read "Authorial Fiat."

HTM, wondering if so many Fiats being used here is the real reason DW gave us two names for Sharona's Italy

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Everybody is forgetting about e=mc^2 (where c is the speed of light). That equation came out of relativity combined with the mass-energy equivalence. No mass conversion to energy, no energy souce for the stars. David Weber should think of a "bet{t}er idea"

You all realize that diamonds only look the way they do because they slow down light while refracting it.

An infinite speed of light means diamonds and other materials like water really look different.

If the speed of light was really infinite, would we be able to see?

Don

Certainly if the speed of light was infinite in all materials you wouldn't have refraction; and hence no lenses. So our eyes wouldn't be able to focus things.

Of course if lenses don't focus things then presumably evolution would have selected against lens-like constructions for vision. Who knows if some alternate approach might have come out that works roughly as well by other means.

Jonathan_S wrote:Certainly if the speed of light was infinite in all materials you wouldn't have refraction; and hence no lenses. So our eyes wouldn't be able to focus things.

Of course if lenses don't focus things then presumably evolution would have selected against lens-like constructions for vision. Who knows if some alternate approach might have come out that works roughly as well by other means.

IMO, the best route is not to go there. This is a problem Steve Stirling has with his "when the fire (gunpowder) died" novels.

Messing with fundamental laws governing chemical properties would make all life impossible.

He of course grandly ignored this...and I have ignored the series after the first book.